Oldest Cities and ABC's

[Feuer Frei!]

"Cuneiform or "wedge-shaped" writing was the ancient script of the Sumerians and invented sometime shortly before 3100 BC. Prof. Denise Schmandt-Besserat of the University of Texas at Austin has traced the development of cuneiform writing back through its various stages to a system of accounting associated with the beginnings of agriculture as demonstrated at Mureybet, Syria, [imagined as far back as] c. 8000 BC.

Though the Sumerians first used cuneiform, many others including Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Elamites, Kassites, Hittites, Mitanni, Hurrians, Urartu, and Persians adapted the cuneiform writing system and made it their own.

The technology of writing reached its greatest level of efficiency with the invention of the phonemic alphabet utilizing the acrophonic or "top sound" principle sometime in the early second millennium BC, probably during the Hyksos period c. 1730-1570 BC. Epigraphers cherish the short inscriptions in Early Canaanite from Palestine and Sinai, attributed to the eighteenth or seventeenth century BC, as invaluable examples of alphabet usage, but it's with the hundreds of inscribed clay tablets from Ugarit (modern Ras esh Shamra, the "Fennel Head"), Syria c. 1500-1250 BC, our appreciation of the alphabet is fully realized.

Dr. Moran writes in The Alphabet and The Ancient Calendar Signs, "It would seem to be of some significance and worthy of further investigation, therefore, that the first letter of the alphabet is the Greek alpha, the Hebrew aleph, a bull, not the ordinary word for bull, but a special ancient word used for sacred cattle, corresponding to the Assyrian word alpu, a bull. Scanning down through the other letters of the Hebrew alphabet having names with recognized meanings in the Hebrew, we find that they also deal with ideas in current astrology: a house, a hand, an eye, a fish, a serpent; while strangely enough the last of all in the Hebrew is taw, a mark, a sacred symbol; the Aramaic tor, oryx or ox; the Arabic thaur; the Greek tauros; the Latin taurus; and the Germanic thor, the thunderer. Two bulls? The first and last letter of the alphabet a bull? One is reminded of Alam and Alad, the two bulls of the Sumerians, one on the right hand and the other on the left of the gate of the temple; of alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, which is repeated with such impressive resonance in the Book of Revelation."

THE OLDEST ABC'S

Trier, Germany's oldest city and an outpost of the Roman Empire as early as the 3rd century BC. Roman ruins are found throughout the city, including an ancient Roman gate.




Top Ten oldest cities in the world:



Lisbon, Portugal (2000 B.C.?)
Luxor, Egypt (before 2160 B.C.)
Asyut, Egypt (before 2160 B.C.)
Xi'an, China (2205 B.C.?)
Giza, Egypt (before 2568 B.C.)
Konya, Turkey (2600 B.C.?)
Zurich, Switzerland (3000 B.C.?)
Kirkuk, Iraq (3000 B.C.?)
Jerusalem, Israel (3000 B.C.?)
Gaziantep, Turkey (3650 B.C.?)

[Gargamel]

FF, If you found this interesting (and obviously you did :P), try reading "The Source" by James Michener (sp?). Describes the evolution of a village/city over thousands of years. Interesting read.